NIMBY: Park and Ride? But Think of the Children!

Now, sure. In general, parking lots are an urban blight. Streetsblog is doing a March Madness bracket of parking craters. Streets.mn has repeatedly covered the issues of subsidizing parking over investing in responsible alternatives.

In general, Park And Ride lots are an overlay solution to deal with the impact of poor planning and sprawl. MN65, from Northeast Minneapolis and northward, is a fine example of a road that is a freakshow of poor planning, wretched light timing, and strange use. Businesses along much of the corridor once you cross into Anoka County are only accessible from side roads, which can be baffling to the outsider to access. MN65 through Anoka County has a notable accident rate.

The proposed site of this Park-and-Ride is at Paul Parkway and Ulysses Street, which functions as a sort of frontage to MN65 in sections of Blaine, with some sections close in to MN65, and others where it curves away and functions more as an independent through street. (Paul Parkway is also known as 121st, for those of you who like to get your bearings numerically.)

Several neighbors of the lot complained that Blaine was to take on the “burden” of increased traffic on its local streets to improve traffic on major highways. From this new lot, buses are expected to go south on MN65, west on US10, west on MN610, south on MN252 and east on I94 into Minneapolis. Residents complained that it would benefit the no-goodniks of East Bethel and Ham Lake (a town, for the record, that does not feature a large body of water with buoyant pork product).

However, given that the parcel is (and has always been) zoned commercial, neighbors may actually benefit from the more targeted use as a Park-and-Ride lot, rather than as a Taco Bell or similar. The baseball complex can use it as overflow parking on weekends, keeping cars OUT of the nearby neighborhood.

At least one of the four community dissenters was concerned about the children biking to the baseball complex. While it’s a little early in the season to evaluate via observation, it’s my highly educated guess that this number is really low and the “children biking” is a total red herring. Most of the baseball games at the complex are not played by kids from the nearby neighborhoods. A lot of the games are for traveling team baseball — kids who live insufficiently close to ride bikes to games. And relative to the kids of Blaine who may have this as a “home” field and/or practice site, the complex is most accessible to those kids who live in west Blaine and need not cross MN65. Crossing MN65 via any means (including in a tank) is of dubious safety. Crossing as a pedestrian or cyclist is positively horrifying, even as a full-gown adult. Creating a Park-and-Ride cannot make the intersection less safe, because “less safe” suggests any degree of safety exists. It does not.

In the end, all but one of the Blaine Council voted in favor of the lot. But, I leave you with this comment from Concerned Citizen Agnes:

My major concern is the kids at the Blaine Baseball Complex. [snip] Not to mention more “strangers” in the neighborhood. Are the children that play in their yards gong to be kept safe from these extra people driving through their neighborhoods?

The Ham Lakers aren’t going to be driving through the neighborhoods, based on placement. Most of the Blaine-iacs won’t be either. Core access is likely to be via MN65 and Paul Parkway. Are creepers really going to be leaning out their car to snatch the delicate children because there is now a Park-and-Ride? What prevents them from doing so now in the absence of a Park-and-Ride? Why would one want to park in a well-lit lot near a baseball complex with a snatched child when you can get on MN65 and flee to Ham Lake instead?

There are legitimate reasons to object to Park-and-Ride lots. They encourage car use and abstract transit, although it has also been found that they can serve a stated use of reducing arterial traffic when applied properly. They can end up as semi-abandoned asphalt if transit funding is cut. They don’t contribute as much to a local economy as an actual commercial use of similar land.

However, it seems that in Blaine, the reason to object, for some, comes down to STRANGER DANGER. It seems that the attraction for creepers isn’t the nearby Baseball Complex, with its abundant adult supervision and dedicated parking, but it’s going to be a Metro Transit lot. Creepers on buses! Insert your standard-issue paranoia about the sorts of people who use public transit here, apparently.

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About Julie Kosbab

Julie Kosbab is an online marketing consultant and active transportation advocate living in Anoka County, Minnesota. She was one of Minnesota's only League of American Bicyclists Certified Instructors when certified in 2005, and is no longer lonely in that calling. A past member of the National Bicycle Tour Directors Association, she has 2 children and a garage full of bicycles. Find her on Twitter as @betweenstations, or read her (seldom updated) blog at Ride Boldly!

3 Responses to NIMBY: Park and Ride? But Think of the Children!

Interesting. I started reading this assuming that it was more a case of BANANAs than NIMBYs, in that these neighbors would be opposed to anything that attempts to locate there. But you make a good argument that the neighbors are specifically opposed to the mass transit use, which is dispiriting in its illumination of the amount of work required to make transit acceptable culturally to ride (if they won’t let other people ride it near them, how can we ever get them to try riding it themselves?).

Realistically, any commercial business use would also attract the no-goodniks of Ham Lake, driving south. And it’d be through a larger swath of the day, in all likelihood. The plot is zoned commercial.

The opposition really does seem to be to the transit use. It’s not the financials — either the property tax issues, or city investment (there is none). It’s not “parking lots are uglee.”

And the safety arguments are ridiculous. Crossing MN65 (almost) anywhere in Anoka County is to dance with death. The stretch north of 109th all the way through Ham Lake is especially bad. Traffic to a Park-and-Ride is at least predictable in schedule.

Anyone have any idea about the economics of these park-and-rides? Perhaps if land is plentiful and cheap, a simple lot isn’t bad, but parking ramps are becoming more prevalent. This is a good problem to have, of course: too many riders for a simple lot to support. But the price of attracting suburban and exurban riders seems to be steep and getting steeper. There’s something particularly absurd when folks in Apple Valley are riding 30 miles and have free, sheltered parking for the entire business day — and yet pay the same fare as someone riding from 24th St to downtown.

Obviously, no transit service is 100% self-sustaining. Nor are highways, of course, especially when we don’t dare toll beyond the Lexus Lane. But does simple transit fare even cover the cost of maintaining the spot in the parking ramp?